One thing that really bugged me at school was being taught the saying,
‘The more things change, the more they stay the same’, or rather, ‘Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose’, as French statesman Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord first wrote it in the 1800s. ‘WTF’ I would have written on social media, if social media or ‘WTF’ had been invented.
What did that even mean?
Then you grow up, and years later you realise, well, ain’t that the truth. And nowhere more than our world of PR and comms. Older readers will recall a time before social media and the internet – those older still, like me, remember exciting 90s industry breakthroughs like 24/7 TV rolling news and even (gasp) colour photos in newspapers. Before my time, but the invention of the printing press in the 1440s was probably a bit of a media game-changer too.In the time it’s taken to write this there’s probably even a new platform just invented where we should all be thinking about landing our client – and that’s fine because a key part of our job is understanding how technology constantly pushes forward the media landscape, and ensuring we always stay on top of it.
And here’s the thing: as media hurtles ever onward into unchartered territory, the basics of our job stay the same. Journalists still want what they’ve always wanted: stories. Our world of media relations still requires us to create stories that do a job for both journalist and client. And our challenge remains to take beautifully crafted stories and successfully land positive, branded coverage. Easy, right? Spoiler: no, it’s not.My ex-natio nal newspaper editor colleague will tell you there’s no such as an old story, and no such thing as a new story. Every story HAS been done, and you’ll have to trust me on that. Just like journos have a sixth sense on whether or not something’s a story, we PRs need to develop ways of creating the same, with maximum client messaging at its heart while removing minimum editorial independence. So yeah, nothing’s changed – except it has, as the constantly evolving media landscape means new styles of reportage and ways of creating stories.
Let’s take, oh I dunno, social media: people have always bitched, moaned and complained, in the office, home or pub, because that’s what people do. It was just never enough to make a national news story. Nowadays, people do it on Twitter, TikTok or Reddit – which means it’s a potential story (including us, fellow PRs). Hence omnipresent 2024 headlines like, ‘You’re doing X all wrong’, ‘Fans of X are all saying the same thing’ and ‘Internet goes into meltdown over X’. Everything’s changed. Everything’s stayed the same. Apologies, then, to Charles-Maurice for ever doubting your 19th-century wisdom. And thanks for writing something I can use here 200 years later as a punchline: ‘Since the masses are always eager to believe something, for their benefit nothing is so easy to arrange as facts’.
Learn more about Howard Bowden's upcoming session on October 8th here.